Mandate
by plumbloom
Summary: The mandate held that no werewolf would be permitted to reproduce, and the Ministry of Magic took the enforcement of that mandate very seriously. Remus-centric oneshot, darkfic.


After nearly an hour of trying to conjure a proper Patronus, Harry fell bonelessly into one of the desks, wiping his forehead with his sleeve and staring disconsolately at the Honeydukes bar that Lupin placed before him.

"I can't eat another mouthful; I'll be sick," he half-moaned, pushing it away. "I'm alright, Professor, I swear."

Lupin studied him for a half-moment, and then nodded. "Alright."

Minutes passed while Harry recovered his breath, his mind still fixed on the voices of his mother and father, connecting them to the photographs he had of their wedding and courtship. He gave (rather cruelly) the high, cold laugh to Sirius Black, snickering even as he stood on the altar at James' and Lily's wedding. Harry watched Lupin rub his eyes and pour himself another cup of tea, and finally ventured,

"Professor?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"What do you hear, when a Dementor comes near you? I mean," he hastily revised, remembering what had happened when he had rather brazenly asked Dumbledore a similar personal question about private matters, "is it an all-bad memory, or a bad one sort of…mixed with good? Because I'm having some trouble, you know, I want to hear my parents and I think that's hindering my ability to conjure a proper Patronus…"

Lupin's eyes had gone vacant, his haggard face paling and slackening into a soft expression of remembrance.

"Oh, Harry."

_It had happened on his thirteenth birthday, the summer he'd returned from Hogwarts. That was the age the Ministry of Magic had stated in the mandate, as most young men 'came of age', so to speak, around that time. The mandate held that no werewolves could be permitted to reproduce. His mother had warned him beforehand, so it wasn't as if he wasn't prepared. He hadn't told any of his friends, though: he was far too afraid of losing their companionship._

Yet he still did not understand the seriousness of the situation – not until he was bound and gagged and tied, spread-eagled, to the old wooden bed in his mother's bedroom, listening to her hysterical sobs from the next room. The Ministry official knelt between his legs, leering up at him with bad British teeth, and Remus's ears were filled with a sort of roaring noise.

The man pulled down his knickers and cut them off with the cruel curving knife that he carried, and his lips curled at the revealed flesh beneath. "Tell me, master werewolf, have you even put this to use yet?" And as he spoke he flicked at Remus's exposed skin, painfully, and the boy cried into his gag.

"Well, there's no reason that I shouldn't put it to use," he growled, and climbed on top of Remus. The boy shut his eyes tightly.

Half an hour later he lay limp and dazed as the man tidied himself up, grinning. "Yeh should be thankful, wolf boy. That's the first and last time you'll fuck in your entire life."

Remus barely heard him; his vision was blurry and his ears were still ringing. His mother had long stopped crying, and he wondered vaguely where she was.

"Now," said the man, and took up the same knife that he'd used to cut Remus's knickers off in one hand. "Most of them in my profession use wands," he explained. "Me, I prefer the old fashioned way."

The knife descended so quickly that Remus wasn't even frightened. He didn't feel pain, either, until after the man held up the bloodied knife, grinning, and the boy heaved in an effort to keep his bile down, knowing he would choke to death if he dared to vomit.

Then the pain came, in unbearable waves, as the man finished the job and then finally pulled out his wand to finish the job, obviously loath to end the agony by closing the wounds up with magic. Remus thrashed back and forth very slowly, biting his lips through the gag until they bled.

Finally the man sealed the wounds and cast cleaning spells, and Remus's body relaxed, trembling terribly all over. He did not watch as the man performed a few more spells – medicinal ones. Then he untied him, chucked Remus's cheek, and was gone with a pop.

Remus Lupin lay on the bed, and then he rolled over and threw up.

"Professor?" Harry's voice, and his gentle fingertips on Lupin's forearm, jarred the werewolf out of his terrible reverie. "Are you alright?"

Lupin's gaze, however, remained vacant, and finally he dropped his head and said softly, "You should go to bed, Harry, it's nearly ten o'clock."

Harry watched him with a worried expression, and then nodded, and said, "Good night, Professor."

Lupin did not reply, and after Harry had left he remained in his chair behind the teacher's desk, head bowed in the light of the waning moon, struggling to breathe, struggling to breathe.


End file.
